Day 12: Wild dogs inside and outside the car

On day 12, I brought my friend Shirley and her two sons into the park. One could make comparisons to hyenas and monkeys, but to be honest they were almost disappointingly well behaved and normal in every respect. The youngest was seven and naturally, his attention wasn't held for the long periods of time when there is nothing to see or do when you're out spotting for game. A cell phone loaded with games was his refuge.

The oldest was 11 and had better English. He was a bit shy but grinned broadly every time I made jokes and hints about leaving him for the lions. He had a huge interest in the park and was probably disappointed that we didn't see a single feline the whole day.

The day started, like so many others in Kruger, with a bang. We had gone from Numbi almost straight to Transport Dam but on the dusty gravel road down there, we saw several cars parked and were soon watching three (as far as I could see) hyenas eating some carcass while four (again, as far as I could make out) wild dogs were running around them, trying to steal a morsel here and there. This was an amazing sight, although I am not quite sure whether the boys realized how lucky they were.

Video of the hyenas, sadly I was too slow to get the wild dogs on film.


The video itself is uninteresting and I would have deleted it if not for the fact that you can hear an elephant trumpeting angrily at the very beginning. S/he'd been at it for about 30 seconds before I finally got my ass in gear, so I only caught the last few seconds of her rant.


After this, we saw ellies and giraffes en masse and we stuffed face in a couple of places and at Skukuza, I got the boys t-shirts with Kruger on them. At Afsaal, I noticed my trusty waitress of these past several days, Samaria who was standing by the entrance to the parking lot. I pulled up to say hello and she told me she'd been standing there for two hours, waiting for someone to take her to the Malelane gate. Her mother in law had been hospitalized and Samaria was going to Komatipoort to buy a new pain medication she'd been recommended.

We put our crap in the trunk and offered her a seat, and cosmic karma revealed itself pretty quickly, as we saw several rhinos along the way. We also went out to the bridge to watch crocs and hippos down in the river. We came back to Numbi on the Voortrekker, where we wound up in a herd of ellies on both sides of the road and sometimes in the middle of it. All in all, I think it had been a bit long and tedious day for the boys, but also that they'd had some fun and learned some new things.

My lunch from Skukuza. Double cheeseburger, mmmmmmm.


Me & mah crew up at Mathekenyane (aka Granokop), a bald hilltop where you can ascend from your vehicle at your own risk. I have never seen a single animal within sight of it, so I think they're all very well aware that this is the humans' habitat.


There's a small pond by the N'waswitshaka waterhole up at S65, where this rock can be seen. Sometimes it'll raise its head to snort in some air, then return to being a stone and a safe haven for the many turtles on its back.


Some of the ellies we encountered on the Voortrekker.


They're not exactly holding tails, but that's how I envision them.